Continuous updates of the Ajmer and Alwar Lok Sabha seats and Mandalgarh assembly seat will be available on www.ceorajasthan.nic.in

Counting of votes for the by-polls in two Lok Sabha and one assembly constituency will take place on Thursday.

Counting will begin at 8 am and the Election Commission has set up a secured facility for disseminating trends and results on its website. Continuous updates of the Ajmer and Alwar Lok Sabha seats and Mandalgarh assembly seat will be available on www.ceorajasthan.nic.in.

Chief election officer Ashwini Bhagat said that the results will be uploaded and updated on the website after every round of counting in each assembly segment. Alwar has 11 assembly segments while Ajmer has eight.

The website will display a candidate’s total votes at the end of every round, the name of the winner and the runner-up and other details will be displayed after counting is finally over. The votes cast through the electronic postal ballot paper system will also be included after due verification.

Bhagat said that proper security arrangements have been made for the counting.

A total of 42 candidates are in the fray for the bypolls to the three seats, the election to which was held on Monday.

Both the ruling BJP and opposition Congress have claimed that they will win all the three seats. After former chief minister Ashok Gehlot said on Tuesday that he was confident of Congress sweeping the bypolls, state BJP president Ashok Parnami too expressed similar sentiments.

The Congress and BJP are involved in a direct fight in Ajmer and Alwar while it’s a three-cornered contest in Mandalgarh with BJP’s Shakti Singh Hada, Congress’ Vivek Dhaka and independent Gopal Malviya in the fray.

The bypolls on all the three seats were necessitated after the sudden death of BJP MPs Sanwarlal Jat from Ajmer, Mahant Chand Nath Yogi from Alwar, and MLA Kirti Kumari from Mandalgarh.

According to the Election Commission, 4,194 polling booths were set up in the three constituencies. For the first time, EVMs with photos of candidates were provided to avoid confusion among voters regarding candidates with similar names.